Which means that there's a lot of intervention from the state into people's private lives, that every responsibility must be taken away because we're not good enough, because we're too weak. I don't understand what good there is in just saying that rapists and pedophiles are everywhere, that the world is divided between the victims on one side and the aggressors on the other. That's not how I want to see people, or myself.

What about you, Kim?

Rand Carlson

You be me for a while, and I'll be you: Laetitia Sadier and Kim Gordon

GORDON: Wow [laughs]. I guess I'm kind of bugged by how the media and MTV make kids feel that their scene isn't important, that they have to be part of this sort of homogenized idea of what's hip. When you first start going out to a club and hearing music, it has such an impact on you. That's far more important than anything MTV is gonna present to you.

CP: Do you resent that your band has become a signifier of cool?

GORDON: I think people have this wrong impression that we want to be cool or we try to be cool or something. But when you've experienced childbirth and people dying around you and stuff, those kinds of questions don't really matter.

CP: Do you still get excited when you see your new record in a store?

GORDON: You know, I never go into record stores [laughs]. I try to avoid it at all costs. Laetitia, have you seen High Fidelity? [Sadier hasn't, though Stereolab is on the soundtrack.] Thurston buys records, but going to a record store isn't fun for me. I could go and spend 15, 20 minutes and be done, but then there's a lot of hanging around, waiting for him.

SADIER: Yeah, it's tedious, isn't it? That's another point we have in common.